The ongoing battle for the Kurdish border town of Kobani (Ayn al-Arab in Arabic) continues apace today, with Kurdish officials reporting that they managed to retake the village of Tel Shahir overlooking Kobani.
It’s not the first time the Kurds have retaken the hill, and it probably won’t be the last, as Kurdish leaders talk up the idea of the Kobani conflict being a war of attrition against ISIS that could last a long time.
In a way, it already has, as ISIS first moved into the region over a month ago, and has seized hundreds of villages in the conflict. Kobani hasn’t fallen as fast as many expected, but ISIS continues to pump reinforcements in, and the town is very much still contested.
The talk is still that some 150 Peshmerga fighters will eventually enter Kobani from Iraqi Kurdistan, but this doesn’t seem like a game-changer either, and rather just more of the same tit-for-tat escalation of the battle for the border town.